New Roof For The Dharavi Shelter

Yesterday we just replaced the old roof of the Dharavi Shelter, which was made with cement sheets (which contains asbestos and is widely used all over India) with Poly Al sheet a new material made of recycled Tetra Pak bricks.

The Poly Al sheets, which were donated to us by Daman Ganga, a company that specializes in all forms of recycling, has already sparked a lot of interest in Dharavi. It is slightly more expensive than fribo-cement sheets (Rs 220 vs Rs 150 per M2) but superior in every other respects. It is much healthier since it doesn’t contain asbestos. It also absorbs much less heat and is supposedly unbreakable!

We are also creating new windows and doors for better ventilation and cleaning up the backyard. The construction work has been made possible thanks to a donation by White Architects, who visited us from Sweden last September.

This animation presents what Dharavi could look like if it was allowed to continue develop incrementally. All designs in the video were conceived by contractors living and working in Dharavi, Mumbai, as part of the Design Comes as We Build project.